New members of an infamous Mexican drug cartel were forced to eat children’s hearts as part of a gruesome initiation rite, informers told authorities in the western state of Michoacan.

Officials investigating an organ trafficking ring allegedly run by the Knights Templar cartel said there is evidence the late gang boss Nazario Moreno demanded that recruits proved their loyalty through an act of cannibalism.

“At [an] initiation ceremony they used the organs, in this case the heart, and forced people going through this initiatory process to eat it,” Alfredo Castillo, the federal government’s envoy to Michoacan, told a local radio.